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Motivated by the goal of understanding the labour conditions of workers in the videogame industry and their participatory power to create decent work, Not All Fun and Games is a critical examination of a global entertainment juggernaut with revenues that top film, television, and music production combined. Jobs in the industry are heralded as the vanguard of the new economy, governments offer lucrative tax credits to lure game studios to their regions, and game developers often express commitment and passion for their work. Yet, the industry is also known for its toxic workplaces. To understand these disparities and gain insight into twenty-first-century labour conditions, Marie-Josée Legault and Johanna Weststar have carried out a comprehensive mixed-methods study of the North American industry over the past fifteen years. They combine detailed survey data from thousands of game developers with over one hundred qualitative interviews to systematically reveal labour issues such as precarity, lack of workforce diversity, unpredictable schedules, unpaid overtime, low unionization rates, worker burnout, and significant pay inequality. Updating the theoretical concept of citizenship at work, the authors connect these labour issues to a fundamental lack of voice and representation in the workplace. They determine that videogame workers and others in contemporary project-based work environments lack agency in regulating their work and lack fundamental protections. Not All Fun and Games comprehensively documents conditions in the North American industry and highlights ways to counter workers' lack of voice and representation in their workplaces to better create healthy, equitable, and inclusive workplaces.

A long-term study of videogame developers reveals that they face challenging working conditions and wish for unionisation, although they remain mostly non-unionised. In the broad corpus of literature on propensity to unionise, scholars often offer different explanations of feeble propensity among precarious workers in low-skilled jobs, on the one hand, and those in knowledge work, on the other. We contend that this neglects a larger shared context of increasing financialisation of organisations that has a deterrent effect on intentions to unionise. The effect of financialisation on workers' representation of interests is less studied than the process of financialisation itself and its effect on worsening working conditions. Yet financial stakeholders are now important labour relations actors even while not formally present in the system. We draw on literature on propensity to unionise and new actors in labour relations to include the effect of financialisation and challenge the dichotomous explanation of propensity to unionise that opposes low-skilled jobs to knowledge work.

Summary This paper presents a case study of pregnancy/parental leave arrangements among faculty members at a mid-sized Canadian university. Pregnancy/parental leaves and associated benefits are often taken for granted, particularly among unionized employees in Canada; however, this research shows that continued vigilance is required to maintain the standard and equity of these rights. The data consist of self-report accounts of faculty experiences in making leave arrangements over the period 2000-2010. The results show inequity in leave arrangements across faculties, across and within departments and for individuals who had more than one leave. Much of this inequity stemmed from individualized “creative” negotiations and problem-solving when the leave was scheduled to begin or end in the middle of an academic term. Many of these solutions penalized faculty members for unassigned teaching duties. Faculty members were requested or felt personally obligated to “cover-off” the teaching time before or after their leave by teaching course overloads, using course releases earned through external research grants, condensing courses, or beginning and/or ending the leave earlier than required. This research has implications for unions who must maintain vigilance and relevance in professional environments where individual negotiation takes place and union consciousness is lower. It also emphasizes the burden placed on parents when the bearing and rearing of children is framed as an individual right rather than an issue of social reproduction. As a result of their “choice” to have a baby and take an associated leave of absence, faculty members can experience guilt, fear and anxiety related to their professional and collegial status. Due to these emotions, and faced with a silent collective agreement, faculty members can accommodate the needs of the university to their own detriment. The paper concludes with recommendations for how faculty unions can better protect pregnancy and parental leave rights through improved formal language in policy documents or collective agreements.

This paper presents a case study of pregnancy/parental leave arrangements among faculty members at a mid-sized Canadian University from 2000-2010. The data show that leave arrangements were very inconsistent across faculties, across and within departments, and even for individual faculty members who had taken more than one leave. The majority of problematic cases were instances where a faculty member began or ended a leave in the middle of an academic term. without specific language in their collective agreement, these faculty members often negotiated circumstances that carried individual penalties for duties that were unassigned in light of the leave. This research has implications for unions who must be particularly vigilant and active in professional environments where individual negotiation takes place and union consciousness is lower. It also emphasizes the burden placed on parents when the bearing and rearing of children is framed as an individual right rather than an issue of social reproduction. The paper uses data from a sample of collective agreements across Canadian universities to make recommendations to clarify the procedures for pregnancy and parental leave.

Summary This study examines how the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing university management control strategies have influenced higher education workers’ job security, stress and happiness. The primary quantitative and qualitative data are drawn from a survey of fourteen universities across Australia and Canada, supplemented by secondary research. The analysis examines institutional and worker responses to the pandemic, and resulting conflict over financial control at the macro (sector), meso (university) and micro (individual) levels. At the macro level, university responses were shaped by public policy decisions at both national and subnational layers of the state, and the higher education sector in both countries had a distinctly neoliberal form. However, Australian universities were exposed to greater financial pressure to cut job positions, and Australian university management might have been more inclined to do so than Canadian universities overall. Different institutional support for unionism at the macro level influenced how university staff were affected at the meso and micro levels. Restructuring at the universities across both countries negatively impacted job security and career prospects, in turn leading to reduced job satisfaction and increased stress. Although working from home was novel and liberating for many professional staff, it was a negative experience for many academic staff. Our analysis demonstrates that the experiences of university staff were influenced by more than the work arrangements implemented by universities during the COVID-19 pandemic. The approaches of universities to job protection, restructuring and engagement with staff through unions appeared to influence staff satisfaction, stress and happiness. Our findings extend the literature that documents how university staff routinely challenge neoliberalization processes in a variety of individual and collective actions, particularly in times of crisis. We argue that theorization of struggles over control of labour should be extended to account for struggles over control of finance. Abstract We studied 14 universities across Canada and Australia to examine how the COVID-19 crisis, mediated through management strategies and conflict over financial control in higher education, influenced workers’ job security and affective outcomes like stress and happiness. The countries differed in their institutional frameworks, their union density, their embeddedness in neoliberalism and their negotiation patterns. Management strategies also differed between universities. Employee outcomes were influenced by differences in union involvement. Labour cost reductions negotiated with unions could improve financial outcomes, but, even in a crisis, management might not be willing to forego absolute control over finance, and it was not the depth of the crisis that shaped management decisions.

Though dissatisfied with some management practices and working conditions, like most high-tech knowledge workers, videogame developers remain reluctant towards unionization. This article examines the factors of collective action among developers as an example, using data gathered from an international survey and interviews. We conclude that developers meet some conditions conducive to collective action but face many obstacles as well, both to collective action and to unionization proper. This does not lead us to share the belief of a decline in collective action, but rather raises the issue of conflating union action and collective action. Our study reveals how unsuited the general North American trade union system is to their situation, as it is to project-based environments and knowledge workers in general.

// ABSTRACT IN ENGLISH: Using Kelly's mobilisation theory (1998) to assess their propensity to collective action, this article examines where videogame developers stand regarding the representation of their interests. These workers are good examples of knowledge work in project-based organisations. If Kelly's model allows in general for projections of unionisation in a given sector, we find this is not the case here. Rather, our study leads us to observe how much the labour market has changed since the elaboration of Kelly's model, and how much these workers' needs differ from the options laid out by traditional unions' action as presented by Kelly. This group fulfills two conditions leading to collective action: it has identified shared working problems across the industry and it primarily attributes the responsibility of these to the management. Still, three important conditions hinder any coalition movement under Kelly's model. For one, the group is divided on whether to define its interest in collective or individual terms. It is also divided regarding the degree of injustice or illegitimacy of the situations that they face. Moreover, when these workers make a cost/benefit analysis regarding collective action, any traditional enterprise-based certification and unionisation project poses many challenges. Therefore, Kelly's model would not predict mobilization. However, in place of unionization, videogame developers practise their own types of collective action that allow them to come to terms with the constraints of their environment. This brings us to conclude that Kelly's mobilization theory needs to be re-examined such that collective action is not limited to traditional union action.

Using Kelly's mobilisation theory (1998) to assess their propensity to collective action, this article examines where videogame developers stand regarding the representation of their interests. These workers are good examples of knowledge work in project-based organisations. If Kelly's model allows in general for projections of unionisation in a given sector, we find this is not the case here. Rather, our study leads us to observe how much the labour market has changed since the elaboration of Kelly's model, and how much these workers' needs differ from the options laid out by traditional unions' action as presented by Kelly. This group fulfills two conditions leading to collective action: it has identified shared working problems across the industry and it primarily attributes the responsibility of these to the management. Still, three important conditions hinder any coalition movement under Kelly's model. For one, the group is divided on whether to define its interest in collective or individual terms. It is also divided regarding the degree of injustice or illegitimacy of the situations that they face. Moreover, when these workers make a cost/benefit analysis regarding collective action, any traditional enterprise-based certification and unionisation project poses many challenges. Therefore, Kelly's model would not predict mobilization. However, in place of unionization, videogame developers practice their own types of collective action that allow them to come to terms with the constraints of their environment. This brings us to conclude that Kelly's mobilization theory needs to be re-examined such that collective action is not limited to traditional union action. Adapted from the source document.

Using Kelly's mobilisation theory (1998) to assess their propensity to collective action, this article examines where videogame developers stand regarding the representation of their interests. These workers are good examples of knowledge work in project-based organisations. If Kelly's model allows in general for projections of unionisation in a given sector, we find this is not the case here. Rather, our study leads us to observe how much the labour market has changed since the elaboration of Kelly's model, and how much these workers' needs differ from the options laid out by traditional unions' action as presented by Kelly.

Using Kelly's mobilisation theory (1998) to assess their propensity to collective action, this article examines where videogame developers stand regarding the representation of their interests. These workers are good examples of knowledge work in project-based organisations. If Kelly's model allows in general for projections of unionisation in a given sector, we find this is not the case here. Rather, our study leads us to observe how much the labour market has changed since the elaboration of Kelly's model, and how much these workers' needs differ from the options laid out by traditional unions' action as presented by Kelly. This group fulfills two conditions leading to collective action: it has identified shared working problems across the industry and it primarily attributes the responsibility of these to the management. Still, three important conditions hinder any coalition movement under Kelly's model. For one, the group is divided on whether to define its interest in collective or individual terms. It is also divided regarding the degree of injustice or illegitimacy of the situations that they face. Moreover, when these workers make a cost/benefit analysis regarding collective action, any traditional enterprise-based certification and unionisation project poses many challenges. Therefore, Kelly's model would not predict mobilization. However, in place of unionization, videogame developers practice their own types of collective action that allow them to come to terms with the constraints of their environment. This brings us to conclude that Kelly's mobilization theory needs to be re-examined such that collective action is not limited to traditional union action. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]